Christmas is coming, Christmas is coming!—oh and so are finals. Whether you’re flying home to the Midwest or staying school-side, chances are you have plans and you’ll enjoy them much more without the weight of finals bearing heavily on your chest. Well, Your U cares about you, and we want you to go balls to the walls in confidence this holiday season. That’s why we highly recommend evaluating how you study—and by how we mean how you look. It’s a known fact that self-awareness of appearance affects self-confidence, and increased self-confidence affects performance. That is why we suggest and believe that you study better and retain more information when you are looking good and strutting your stuff.

Don’t study in your pajamas. As humans we are highly conscious of our outer appearance. We know when we look good and when we have no business stepping foot in public—usually that’s how we study—but while that is doing the public a favor, it’s not doing you any.

When we know we look good we tend to feel good because our confidence level rises, regardless if you notice it or not. Naturally, with higher self-esteem comes higher expectations—this is the state you want to be in when you study! It’s simple yet profound. This heightened self-confidence tells your brain that you are capable of more, including understanding and learning, and it triggers your brain to apply itself at a higher capacity.

Everyone has their own study routine and it became your routine for a reason: repetition of certain situations and consequential actions that gave birth to your habits—forming patterns, or routines, unique to you. Whether yours consists of cramming twenty minutes before your exam with a hangover and forty-eight-hour sleep deprivation, or not, it works for you in one way or another. It’s hard to change other people’s habits and damn near impossible to disrupt somebody’s nature, so we aren’t going to pretend that we’ve been enlightened with the power to do so. But this auspicious nugget can be incorporated into anyone’s already established pattern.

Girls, have your hair brushed and even some light accent makeup on, as long as you feel pretty and presentable. Men, same thing, feel handsome. But if you really want to see the effects of this strategy, dress smart—or what you perceive to be smart. This might mean you’re decked out in a total cliché of a sweater and reading glasses, or girls, you put your hair in a bun.

We have all intended on applying better study habits but unfortunately the perpetuity of our habits usually conquer those well-to-do intentions. There is a significant correlation between how you’re dressed and how you feel—it isn’t rocket science but it’s proven—and simply being mindful of this when you sit down to study will be tremendously beneficial for you.

—after all, how many times does one need to hear that we only retain 5% of what we hear in lecture, but 95% if we try and teach it our self?